tar-sands kill caribou, government kills wolves

North American wildlife rarely outshines the wolf. Wolves are just, simply, awesome. I don’t know how else to put it. They’ve been on the recovery in the US, removed from protection here and there, are even being hunted in some states. All signs of a successful recovery.

TRC doesn’t have a strong opinion of these hunts (we lean towards: Probably not, but if so they should be highly managed by DNR. And no more prosecution of farmer’s protecting cattle), but we absolutely love wolves, and thus do not like to see stories like this:

Tar-sands development pushes Canada to poison wolves. Yes. It appears that the tar-sands development is causing a decrease in the caribou population. No surprise, since the habitat loss from this project is simply mind-boggling. If fewer caribou are around to prey on, then apparently the solution is to have fewer wolves. How? Poisoning, obviously.

It would seem to TRC that restoring the caribou population, to provide prey for a species makes more sense than killing wolves because we have killed too many caribou. But what do we know. We are not the NWF:

Rather than killing wolves, he should be stopping the habitat destruction and restoring habitat associated with tar sands production. Without healthy habitat, the decline of caribou is inevitable, no matter how wolves are managed.

Just one more self-evident display of why the development of the Canadian tar-sands needs to end.